


Beware the Court of Owls

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Series: Grey Feathers [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Deathstroke the Terminator (Comics)
Genre: Dick Grayson is a Talon, Earth-3, Gen, Good!Slade, Mamma Bear, Masks, Mirror Universe, Political Assassination, Slade's pajamas are blue and orange, Swords, creepy nursery rhyme, good parenting?, major injury to a minor, minor damage to a national monument, papa wolf, the #1 threat to America is supervillains, the Truman Balcony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-09 00:57:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3230195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The plan is that Talon will send a message to the nation, that no one is untouchable. That the Court of Owls is not to be trifled with.</p><p>The plan slightly underestimated the Wilson family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beware the Court of Owls

Washington DC slept in the heavy warmth of a late June evening. It was closer to midnight than to sunset, and while some quarters of the city were not yet asleep, and several staff members were working hard in the White House's West Wing, the heart of the presidential residence lay dim and calm in its peaceful green island of lawn and garden. All seemed well.

It was not.

_**Beware the Court of Owls…** _

An assassin had got into the White House. It had been a long time since this had happened, and longer still since one had come so far, but there it was. He was the best, and he was here.

_**That watches all the time…** _

Four Secret Servicemen had died silently where they stood guard in the Center Hall. Their bodies lay in sight of three separate cameras, and when someone discovered that the men responsible for monitoring those cameras were also dead, an uploaded virus deleting all footage, that was when the assassin's presence would most likely be made known. He should have fifteen minutes.

_**Ruling from a shadowed perch…** _

If Wilson had not won a second term, this would not have been necessary, or if he had heeded earlier warnings. But the President was above all things a proud man, and not an easily frightened one, and although he had not led a peaceful life, and had knowingly set himself up against corruption, he did not really understand even now just how deep the shadows in his own country went.

Even the shadiest side of politics had still its darker brother.

_**Behind granite and lime…** _

Hinges in such an important piece of national heritage were oiled scrupulously. The last door on the left eased open without a sound. If the windows to the balcony had been open this might have caused a change in the wind, but when the air failed to stir, the young man in red and black slipped around the door frame, glanced quickly around the curving walls for surprises, and focused on the sofa that looked away from the door, and the two figures that occupied it. Imperceptibly, he relaxed a hair. His information had been correct. Targets located. The difficult part was over.

_**They watch you at your hearth…** _

The President's older son was home on leave this week, after graduating from West Point. Not at the head of his class, but close enough. Close enough. His parents were both very proud, and he was generally understood to have a bright future ahead once he took up his commission. (Always assuming he survived deployment, but that was military life.)

As was their custom when the older brother was home, both sons were sitting up late in the Yellow Oval Room, catching up. They'd always been close, despite the gap between their ages, as brothers who have been some of the only constants in one another's lives often grow close—Grant had been almost more father to Joseph than their actual father had been, much as they _knew_ he loved them, and had spent much of his leave doing his best to soothe his brother's fear that starting a military career meant he would become just as busy and unreachable. He'd be gone most of the time, but he'd write. He'd even call.

Tall and lean, Grant might be the one walking in his father's footsteps, but Joey with his golden curls was the apple of his mother's eye and the darling of the nation. He started high school next year, and everyone was always surprised he was thirteen already. He was small for his age, and much too adorable to be a teenager.

_**They watch you in your bed…** _

Their parents had early engagements tomorrow—the President actually had to be halfway across the country by eight AM—and were consequently asleep, but Joey and Grant got to sleep in, so they were burning the midnight oil.

The Yellow Oval Room wasn't the most relaxing place in the White House, being furnished with fussy French antiques, but Joey liked the view over the balcony, and he liked to have his family as close together as possible when he could. The sitting room next door, which adjoined the Presidential bedroom on the other side, was a little _too_ close if they were going to be talking, since Mom and Dad were both light sleepers, but retiring to one of their own bedrooms across the hall would be too far. And he liked round rooms. They were strange and silly and not something you got in normal houses.

Both boys had the paranoia necessary to public figures, and Grant had Army training as well, but neither imagined any need to avoid predictable behavior patterns in what should be the most secure house in America.

_**Speak not a whispered word of them…** _

Neither of them noticed silent footsteps on the heavy rug behind them.

"I'm not a little kid anymore," Joey insisted, bouncing a little on ivory upholstery.

"Yeah, well, just stick with it a little longer. You might only have a few months before your voice starts breaking, and then Mom will be out her little angel anyway."

"If I get to be as tall as you, I don't even care."

Grant pinched his little brother's ear, drawing out a yelp, muffled in consideration of the late hour. "Hey, now, if your grown-up singing voice turns out to suck, you'll miss—" He never finished saying what Joey would miss. The sentence ended in a gurgle, as a knife jerked across his windpipe.

**_Or they'll send Talon for your head._ **

The first disruption of the plan came when Joey Wilson failed to spend a second paralyzed with horror. Even half a second would have been adequate. Perhaps even a quarter. Instead, against all normal expectation, he moved. Instantly. Arm involuntarily outstretched toward his dying brother, he flung himself off the couch, away from the he-didn't-know-what-but-he'd-been-trained-to-dodge-without-needing-to-think.

If he'd been older, or trained just a fraction better, or even just a little less utterly startled to be attacked _here_ of all places, he might have torn his eyes off his brother in time not to put a spin in his leap, and hit the floor running away. But he did, and landed facing the assassin.

It wasn't even half a second he spent staring. The light fading from his older brother's eyes and the lean, pale figure clothed in black that loomed behind him, masked, scarlet blooming from his shoulders like a compromise between blood and silk, its color almost matching the stains pouring down Grant's shirt and covering the upraised knife.

It wasn't even half a second, but it was time enough for Talon to vault the antique table and the ruined brocaded sofa where his first target's last breath still bubbled out of him. Time enough for Joey to fill his leaden lungs. And then time enough for Talon to seize him by the wrist before he could escape was time enough for him to let the breath out in a scream.

Joseph Wilson sang lead soprano in his choir. The sound of his scream burst out higher and louder than most sirens, cutting through the silent night, and Talon winced slightly from the simple pain of it, though it did not slow him down. He jerked the captured arm toward him, released it, slapped the freed hand over his unbalanced target's mouth and bore him to the floor before he could gather the focus to fight, teeth bared. Brought the bloody knife around again. His eyes behind their mask stared into the wide, terrified green ones of the White House's own small angel, and did not look away as he struck.

As the sharp edge of the knife sliced through Joey's neck, the door to the Presidential suite burst open with a wild shout, which had the exact intended effect of drawing attention. Talon was already on his feet, instinctively, before the door entirely opened.

Slade Wilson did not wear his eyepatch to bed. There were probably people who would care what this meant about him personally and his relationship with his wife, that she was apparently comfortable looking at the grisly hole in her husband's face where one of his own men had shot him, years ago in the war, after then-Lieutenant-Colonel Wilson had waded into the middle of a tense internal altercation over _exactly_ how the US Army was expected to treat enemy civilians. (He'd gotten a medal, later. It was not a fair trade, but he said he wasn't sorry for anything but failure to duck.)

Talon was not someone who gave a damn about any of that, or about the questionable sartorial decision that was orange and blue plaid flannel pajamas. To him, the only notable qualities of the President at this time were the wickedly sharp cavalry saber he had raised in one hand, and the massive handgun he had trained on the assassin's face, as his child's blood flowed over Talon's feet.

Similarly, the only interesting feature of the dashing brunette behind him was her state of armament.

This was not the Adeline Wilson who hosted elegant parties, charmed foreign diplomats, and appeared on tabloid covers pilloried for her taste in shoes. It was not even the woman who had spent the past five years forcing the FBI, CIA, and NSA to share vital information across agency lines before it obsoleted itself. The white silk nightgown faded into insignificance beside the SG 552 short combat rifle slung from her shoulders. Sighting around her husband, she pulled the trigger.

What the man who'd sent his Talon to gouge out a politician's heart had perhaps not fully appreciated was that the President and First Lady were a former Colonel and Captain, and had met when she gave him his Special Forces training. The young man found himself caught between a spray of bullets from the First Lady's carbine and the President, emptying the Desert Eagle as he charged with upraised sword—daring, even for the best-trained soldier; despite being a pistol, it was not normally a one-handed gun. Bulletholes pocked historically significant plaster. A lamp shattered. Two antique Louis XVI style chairs and an American Impressionist painting were beyond recovery.

Talon ducked, using the bleeding child as a sort of prone human shield because his mother was shooting high, not willing to risk hitting him. Two seconds later her magazine was empty, and while she reloaded, the assassin flipped backward out of the way of the President's scything sword, leaving the minimal protection of Joey's vicinity. He'd been hit twice in the lower back, but barely seemed to notice.

The assassin knocked the singing blade aside with his red-stained knife as it made its next slice toward him, stronger than he looked, and then…paused a breathless instant as the President recovered from the too-powerful swing, not taking advantage of the opening, looking from the still-gasping child on the floor in his spreading pool of blood, to the woman raising her assault rifle again, to the man swinging back around to chop him apart, face twisted with rage, both hands on the saber-hilt now, his empty gun thrown aside.

The moment broke not with a bullet or a sword-blow, but with a sharp, spinning toss of the assassin's bloody dagger toward Joey. The First Lady dismissed Talon instantly in favor of throwing herself forward to deflect the blade that had already cut her son once. It clattered against the barrel of her gun, lodged in the wooden floor, and she stayed on her knees where she'd landed, both hands on Joey's neck to stem the flow of blood now that she was close enough. His breath was failing, but as a soldier she knew very well that so long as he was still bleeding, he was not yet dead. "Cover," she snapped out, not even looking up to confirm her husband's compliance.

Single eye narrow, the President charged, and the assassin flung himself back toward the wall in a billow of cape that ended with another, longer dagger in his hand.

He lashed out, scored a thin line of blood up the side of Wilson's face. His weapon was smaller and his reach shorter, but it was much, much more maneuverable, and the assassin was controlling the fight. For a moment he closed, too far within his opponent's range for the sabre to swing with any speed, and the bigger man nearly took hold of him in the instant it took to lay a slash across his ribs and leap back, light as a bird, concealed within the folds of his scarlet cape.

The stand-off broke with the sound of running footsteps. The surviving Secret Service was finally coming to the rescue, two minutes and forty-six seconds late. Talon's eyes flickered to the door, and he moved left along the curve of the wall, toward the windows on the southern end of the oval. The President tried to stop him.

This was unacceptable. It was impermissible to be caught, to be questioned, and a Talon did not have the luxury of taking his secrets to the grave. If they killed him, he would wake to captivity. The second target might yet die of his injuries. Retreat was the only option. In a sudden furious burst of energy, Talon struck Wilson's sword aside, slammed a kick into his stomach that sent him back several paces, and flipped into the air.

There was a glass door in the southwest corner of the room, but that was much too far; without hesitation he smashed heel-first through the eastmost window onto the Truman balcony, followed closely by an enraged sword-wielding father.

It would have been wiser, perhaps, to allow the assassin to retreat, but wisdom is not a quality often foremost in the grief-stricken. From inside the bloodstained yellow room Adeline's voice barked out, furious at the lateness but more furious still at the possibility that an instant's further delay might be added to getting medics to her son. A moment's grim smile stretched across Slade's face. If there was any hope, she would take care of it.

He would deal with the murderer.

With a flurry of blows, Slade drove the slim figure along the balcony, hoping to corner him against the front of the building. He was stronger, but the smaller man was just as fast, and ducked and leapt like nothing human, rather than risk a still parry and the chance of being crushed. It had become clear earlier—when he slashed at the ribs instead of the gut, when he fled—that the killer was not here for him. The targets had been only Joseph and Grant. Slade himself was supposed to stay alive, to live with the loss. Someone hated him very much indeed.

Finally, he landed a deep cut across the assassin's collarbone, and found just a little more strength to pour into following it up, his teeth bared in satisfaction. Except…as he watched the blood was already stopping, and then the cut had sealed itself, and as the acrobatic fighter took advantage of his distraction, vanished entirely.

Those bullets that had seemed to strike him earlier had not been grazes after all. _Metahuman_ , Slade thought, and shook off his surprise, and fought harder.

He'd never let anyone call him a supersoldier. Not publicly. He'd had a few separate reasons at the time of his insistence, but ultimately he was sure it had saved his political career. People would cheer for a supersoldier, and follow his adventures, especially if heavily fictionalized, but they wouldn't _vote_ for him. The 'super' made him too unlike them. Apart.

It wasn't as if it was accurate anyway. The enhancements weren't that dramatic—he was just a little faster than he'd been before. A little stronger, a little sharper…a little harder to kill. It gave him an edge.

It was an edge he'd dearly needed more than once, overseas. And he needed it now. Now, against one young man, one young man who had stolen his sons from him, he needed every bit of speed and stamina that had kept him alive through rains of bullets and hells of sand and acrid smoke. Every bit rage could summon, and then a fraction more. He struck, the assassin parried. The boy lunged, and he was forced to duck. His sword sliced across the boy's bicep and the blood was ignored; the wicked knife nicked his knee and it cost him a little bit of maneuverability.

He had this disadvantage, as well: his opponent was fighting to escape. It meant his life was in slightly less danger, which he didn't care about, but it meant that if he relented at all, he could lose without taking another hit.

"Who sent you?" he hissed. Most assassination attempts were made by amateurs—lunatics, for the most part, motivated by some personal hatred or other desperate emotion. They might be able to fight, in some cases, but they were sloppy and usually foiled by security measures long before they got anywhere near their targets. This was a professional. Not even a fanatic; whoever hated him, they had sent a proxy. There was nothing personal here; Slade could feel no heart behind the young man's blade.

For _nothing personal_ this blank-faced cypher had cut his boys' throats.

And the question hung unanswered, cut to ribbons by both flashing blades.

Finally he smashed through the assassin's guard, disarmed him, laid him open against the banister, got his hands around his throat. He would not escape. _He would not escape._

At first, the reaction was the normal human one, though improbably calm—his captive reached up to tear at the grip cutting off his air. Then, in almost the same instant, the smaller man folded himself up, impossibly small, braced the soles of his feet against Slade's chest, and began to push. It was a race now, whether he would strangle the murderer unconscious before the strength of his fingers lost out to the strength of his opponent's legs.

As he felt his grasp slipping, the soldier snarled and snatched at the undefended face before it slipped out of reach. His fingernails left deep scores down the assassin's forehead and across his left cheek, and he came away with the stiff black mask in his hand.

For a moment, they stared one another in the face, Slade's one narrow eye and one dark pit meeting the boy's wide, impossibly blue gaze. And he _was_ a boy, the old soldier saw in that moment, younger than he'd realized, maybe not even Grant's age. Maybe not even old enough to enlist. And his huge blue eyes were almost, almost utterly empty.

And then he ducked, as if he thought there was still time to hide his features, ducked and then _lunged,_ slashing his gloved hand across the front of Slade's thigh so that his right leg buckled from a cut that should not exist. And then the young killer had wheeled away, not taking advantage of the opening, and vaulted over the railing, abandoning any attempt to climb the pillars in favor of a sheer forty-foot drop.

The scarlet cape billowed up as he jumped, presenting an ideal target even for a man whose right leg was failing him, and Slade grabbed a handful, only to be left holding nothing but fabric, as it popped loose at the shoulders and left his enemy falling free. Only then did the Secret Service finally spill onto the balcony, in time to drag the furiously struggling President back from the edge of a drop he was in no condition to make.

Talon hit the lawn running. Bullets shredded the air from three directions, some of them embedding themselves in him, or hitting and bursting out the far side in fountains of blood, but long after he should have fallen, the assassin ran on. Past the fountain, lit in floodlights that flattened him to the detached shadow of a boy, cut loose. Two security officers intercepted his course enough to accost him as he approached the fence—a moment, a lunge, and the fugitive had grabbed the taller, darker one by the elbow and pulled him close, between himself and the other guard's point-blank bullets, and brought his bare hand stabbing up into his captive's gut in the same motion. He bowled the second man over with the spasming body of his comrade, viscera spilling to his knees, clambered up the fence in instants, and was gone.

Slade sagged in his bodyguard's grasp, and they cautiously let him go. He ignored them, staring across the South Lawn toward the Washington Monument, where the assassin had disappeared.

He should have been doomed. He was fleeing onto open ground, in a striking black costume, in a city swarming with federal personnel, after making himself into Public Enemy Number One. Security would draw tight as a noose after an attack like this. Barricades would already be going up. No one would leave the city tonight, and no one even casually answering his description would go unquestioned.

And yet Slade felt in his bones, as the blood from his leg slowed too late, that no one would be able to hold that young man. It was up to him.

Slade had made many promises in his life. He had sworn himself to his country once as soldier and once as commander. He had sworn to his best friend never to leave him behind, and almost lost everything keeping his word. He had sworn to love and cherish and defend Adeline until death came between them. And most importantly, he had sworn himself when each of his boys were laid in his arms that he would do anything, dare _anything_ to protect them, at whatever cost.

He had cost them everything.

This had all been for them, to make sure that this country that they would live in long after he was gone was the best one he could make. And it was his Presidency, and his failure to know and guard against some enemy, that had cost him their lives.

So now he made another vow. _I will find you,_ he promised that fleeing shadow. Promised the whisper of humanity lurking in its dead blue gaze, the being that had made the choice to cut a small boy's throat as he lay struggling on the floor. _If it takes the rest of my life. No matter how far you run. No matter what disguise you wear. I will_ know _you when I see you. And I will make you pay._

His oath to protect his family lay in shards at his feet, but to keep this new one, he might break all the others that remained.

He stared across the smooth grass, feeling himself harden into stone and willing it to be steel instead, steel too strong to shatter.

"Mr. President," said the expressionless voice of one of the Secret Servicemen behind him. Coates, that was the one. Weighed down with such guilt and shame that Slade almost forgave him for being alive when his sons were dead. "Mr. President, please come inside."

Slade snorted. "You really think I'm in danger from a sniper right now? With the whole area swarming with law enforcement?"

"You know you might be, sir," said Coates steadily.

And of course he _did_ know, although if there was a sniper they should have fired minutes ago and be legging it like hell right now. The assassin boy had lured him out onto the balcony, after all. It was SOP to have ranged support for a small strike force, if you could, and one man was definitely _small._ An intelligent enemy might be _expected_ to have placed someone with a rifle to cover the boy's extraction. But if they were there, they would have fired by now. And while he did not believe his enemy to be exactly _stupid_ , all indications were that he or she was arrogant enough to be almost the same thing.

"But sir," Coates continued, still in that perfectly even, privately miserable voice, "what I meant was that you probably want to be with the First Lady while the doctors operate on Joseph."

Slade's steady breath caught, and he felt the stone around his heart crack against his will. Joey wasn't dead.

 _Joey wasn't dead. (_ Yet.)

Slowly, slowly he turned from the place his enemy had vanished. Faced the room where Grant's body was being photographed as evidence, where the floor was washed in his children's blood. Now that he sorted through his memory, he had heard a yowling ambulance pulling up to the far side of the building, and he had not yet heard it go. He swallowed against the fear that was hope. And then, jerkily on his half-healed leg, he _ran._

**Author's Note:**

> I wonder if the amount of time I spent reading up on the history of the furnishings of the Yellow Oval Room counts for anything on whatever NSA list I got on by googling about military-carbine models and White House floor plans back-to-back. There was *massive* controversy about Truman putting in that balcony, by the way. Like, a serious chance he was going to lose his shot at reelection for changing the appearance of the White House. Then he finished it, and basically everyone agreed it looked really nice.
> 
> President!Slade was lifted from the Crisis on Two Earths movie for this setting, although the actual characterization wasn't. (This was at LordAlforbia's insistence; it took me a while to figure out why a person like Slade, who is *all* about the personal, would ever seek public office, especially if he wasn't even evil.) I see Slade in this role as a sort of latter-day Andrew Jackson. With much less genocide. Maybe more a sort of Andrew Jackson/Captain America/Nick Fury mashup.
> 
> Talon!Dick in turn is a mashup of Owlman's preexisting sidekick, Talon, and the more recent type from the Nu52, although you can't really tell here because the fact that Owlman rules the Court of Owls doesn't come up, outside the summary.
> 
> I felt kind of bad about killing Grant. If Slade knew what was what, he'd be coming after me and Bruce, not the Talon.


End file.
